A Sentimental Education

Neil Jones on Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes

We all have little aspirations that come and go once in a while, and, as I passed through my later teenage years into my twenties, dreams of being able to get past a first date without causing a minor disaster, or being able to keep a heavy book open during dinner with an ashtray (I still struggle with both) gave way to a nobler one of creating a movie that would have all the easy style of a Jean-Luc Godard film, be as well proportioned as a Herman Hesse novel, and have all the emotional hooks of Ooberman’s Hey Petrunko LP, which I was listening to a lot at that time.

I went through with this dream too, to a certain extent, writing a script that used lots of Ooberman songs in it, and then forgetting it, banishing it to the cupboard where it lies today. But in my dreams, I’d like to think the thing would have played like Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes, for watching that on Sunday night was like seeing all the things that filled my head with crazy cinematic dreams in the first place come back to life.

Film has such potential of coarse. Godard himself mourned of it not staying true to its social duty to be brilliant and relevant and individual, and the modern phenomenon that is the chick flick is a prime sinner. Yet this is one chick flick (oh yes) that is close to Godard-esque, and Hesse-esque in a lot of ways, banishing all of the genre’s many clich・s and etching instead a beautifully-proportioned story of emotion and romance.

In Her Shoes features two sisters, dysfunctional and neurotic in the best tradition of brilliant outsider literary characters. The characters remind me of Hesse-type “doppelgangers”, which are characters he used to represent two parts of a whole that he would bring together so expertly during a novel, and watching the sisters’ stories unwind on screen with a certain grace until their shared tragedy is revealed is distinctly Hessian and beautiful.

Toni Collette in the roll of one of the doppelganger sisters, Rose, is initially perfectly geeky and cynical without conforming to base clich・s (ie soulfully so), driven steadily to the edge of her neurotic, judgemental and bitterly austere world by Cameron Diaz’s free and easy (and slightly slutty) Maggie, played by Diaz with a brilliantly subversive indie grace. The sisters play off each other all the while, introduced in the first part of the movie as the missing (negative) half of one another, and the achievement of the film’s narrative is the blending of them, via sibling sadness, neurosis and sheer hatred of one another, into whole, positive and affectionate characters, friends who by the end give the impression that they’ll chase the demons away together all of their lives.

Moments that bring tears to the eyes come thick and fast from the siblings’ stories once Maggie is chased away in shame from Rose’s home for seducing her boyfriend. Diaz’s character goes off to find her real mother after discovering letters addressed to her that were never delivered by her father, tracking her down to an old people’s home where she begins to work, and her relationship with a retired professor there throws up some beautiful scenes as she’s gently coaxed by the old blind man to read poems aloud to him and break through her intellectual insecurities (Maggie is also dyslexsic). These are really sensitive and beautiful scenes, evocative of the best Lucas Moodyson moments, moments where you feel your head is going to burst with the subtle emotion and beauty of it all.

Diaz’s expression as she finds herself being won over and liberated by the old man can possibly go down in cinema history with the tears of Anna Karina, and the way a deeper insight and tenderness flows through her character for the rest of the movie is great. Considering we’ve already been privy to her licentious past, Maggie blends with the other old people at her new home afterwards in a comical manner, and the taming of the libertine into a caring yet still sensual girl is cinematic poetry in motion.

In a roundabout way, via the professor, Maggie of coarse acquires the best aspect of her sister Rose, her caring, intelligent nature, and at the other end of the line, we also see her own untamed nature rubbing off positively on Rose, who, having lost her job as a lawyer through a nervous breakdown and become a dog-walker, softens, opens up a little, and emerges out of her cynical cocoon to experience all the highs and lows of a life open to beautiful things. To a backdrop of genuine romance and humour at the old people’s home, the shared tragedy of both sisters is slowly revealed to them and provides the final bind in their turbulent relationship, modern callousness and neurosis turned on its head by poetry. In Her Shoes is the chick flick that Godard would have made, or Hesse would have wrote. And really, how good is that?

© Miwsig